Sacrifice Fly

Hi.

I know a guy named Derek. He’s a rapper. His very first show was playing with the Sebutones a long time ago. A few months back he went to work on an album and reached out to me to ask if I would do a verse on a song. I said I would because I’m a romantic. He asked “how much do you charge?” I told him, “nothing”. I’ve never charged anyone for a verse ever. I guess I got no game that way. I don’t know…

Derek’s rap name is D-Sisive. The song we ended up making together is called “The Superbowl Is Over”. I was happy with how it turned out. It’s on his album “Let The Children Die”. When I heard it I was kinda dumbfounded by how brutally honest a lot of the material is. He really lays it all on the line. I find a lot of rappers don’t have the guts.

Anyway, recently Derek wrote to me and said, “we should start a group!” I said yes to the idea right away even though it’s a little bit crazy because I need a god damn break! I just finished recording enough songs for two albums (you’ll be seeing that stuff soon), a DVD (also coming very soon), scored a film (coming soon), did remixes for a handful of people, a bunch of other collaborations, plus did some recording for a Haiti relief album (coming super-soon). It’s nuts. But I said, “yeah, let’s go to work”.

I had been sitting on an idea for a long time (I’m always sitting on a lot of ideas) and it occurred to me that Derek would be a perfect guy to work with for it…

See, I’ve pretty much made a career out of telling stories from my life and those of the people I’ve known along the way and putting them to weird, dark, unpopular music. Derek has kinda done the exact same thing. So my idea is to invite people from all over the world to send me their stories and I’ll turn them into songs.

So Derek and I have formed a group called The Ricardo Christoff Apparatus and we’re calling the project “100 Story Building”.

I’m asking people to send stories about people they know. I have a feeling that it might be better to tell someone else’s story than your own in this case because things like humility or pride are less likely to get in the way. And I’m looking for all kinds of stories: funny ones, tragic ones, inspiring ones, sexy ones… all kinds. My plan is for the song titles to be the name of the person the song is about. Simple.

This may sound super-corny, but I was partly inspired to try this by watching the Olympics on tv. They always do these profiles on athletes and their amazing stories and even though I never heard of these people in most cases, I always find it really compelling. Know what I mean? So I just want to tell people’s stories. I expect I’ll read lot of amazing stuff. And I just think this idea is nice. Don’t you think it’s a nice idea?

So, all the info is at www.100storybuilding.tumblr.com (even though I just explained it all) and people can send their stories to 100storybuilding@gmail.com

Derek and I will work hard to do justice to people’s stories and get them heard by the whole world (or at least a good handful of people around the world. Let’s be honest, I’m no Katy Perry or whatever the hell).

Oh – and by the way – if I get 1,000 stories, I won’t be making 1,000 songs, obviously. I’ll pick a bunch of the best ones, which I’m sure won’t be easy. But this very well may be a project that goes on for the rest of my life if all goes well.